“Sl­eepy Chief” hits tarmac

As planned the first aircraft of Sólyom Hungarian Airways arrived at Budapest Airport on 18 August. The aircraft first „saluted” its new home airbase with a low-level flypast and then landed at Runway 31L.

The first Sólyom (Falcon) – a Boeing B 737-500 with code HA-SHA and named Álmos Vezér (Sleepy Chief, if translated word for word) after one of the seven chieftains of the Magyars – was greeted on the apron by hundreds of invited VIPs, authority representatives, airport employees, journalists, photographers and plenty of plane spotters.
As tradition demands, the plane was welcomed by airport firefighters with a water-cannon salute. After the engines stopped, Commander Ernő Varga and Captain József Schlotter reported the successful first mission of the Sólyom aircraft to József Várgó, the CEO of Sólyom Hungarian Airways.
On Monday the airline made an interesting announcement about planning to introduce Sólyom as a Hungarian trademark and a brand associated with quality merchandise. As a first step the company has bought a stake in Sales One, a distributor of Naturelle products. The first Sólyom-branded batch of bottled water is already in stores, with flour, oil and marmalade soon to be launched.